Jemele Hill has never shied away from expressing her opinion -- in fact her job requires it.

It's not every day that one of my best friends is bullied on Twitter — by name — by the leader of the free world. Yet this week, President Donald Trump called out "SportsCenter" co-host Jemele Hill as the reason ESPN ratings have "tanked."

Jemele and I have been friends since college and we spent a chunk of our professional careers as colleagues at the Detroit Free Press. She is a sister to me. She has a tremendous heart, is generous to a fault and is so funny that I often have to silence her to give my aching belly a break from laughing.

But to many, including the president, she's become a target. She's America's Most Wanted. All because she's had the nerve to speak up for social and racial justice and speak out against police brutality. All because she hasn't condemned NFL players for kneeling during the national anthem. All because she's offered uncomfortable context to discussions about the intersection of race, sports and culture.

And frankly, all because she's an African-American woman.

With Jemele Hill at the mike, it is no wonder ESPN ratings have "tanked," in fact, tanked so badly it is the talk of the industry!

Trump's tweet about Jemele came a day after ESPN announced Monday that the network was suspending her for two weeks for violation of social media guidelines. On Twitter, Jemele suggested that those who oppose Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones' requirement that his players stand for the national anthem shouldn't condemn the players. Instead, they "need to pick up the fight" by refusing to patronize the advertisers who support the Cowboys organization.

Let's be clear: Trump wasn't attacking Jemele for the tweets that got her suspended. Trump was celebrating her misfortune — his petty attempt to kick her while she was down — because he's still angry that she called him a white supremacist and kept her job.

Remember that Trump trotted out White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to call for Jemele's firing. Who needs to worry about the frivolity of North Korea's nukes when the president has an ESPN employee in his crosshairs?

The abuse I've watched my friend bear on social media would be inconceivable to most. Jemele has never shied away from expressing her opinion — in fact her job requires it. But the national backlash, the name-calling, the racist and sexist internet musings, the personal attacks, all of it should be considered out of bounds.

But that's not the world we live in. Instead we pounce. Just ask Donald Trump.

Jemele continues to hold her head high, but such maltreatment does get tiresome. Like her, but certainly not on her scale, I experience it every day. The nasty emails I receive. The voicemails. The tweets that assault everything from my personal appearance to my level of intellect. The Facebook comments from unoriginal individuals who call me a hack because of my last name.

But we endure because we know we want to be on the right side of history. We endure because it's important to resist the status quo when the status quo is flawed. We endure because we have platforms that allow us to encourage discussion about the tough issues. We don't take any of it for granted and never have.

I met Jemele Hill in 1993. I was the editor-in-chief of The State News, Michigan State University's independent student newspaper, and Jemele was a freshman interviewing for an intern position. She was unpolished and green, but she had amazing clips from high school and an enthusiastic nature I couldn't resist. I hired her.

I saw in her a spark I couldn't describe then. I was a kid myself. I now know it to be hunger. Hunger for success. Hunger for redemption. Hunger to have a voice. We often joke that I am responsible for her career and her amazing rise in journalism and now sports commentary. But that joke takes away from the truth. The hard work she has put in, and the abuse she has endured as a black woman to become the professional she is, is immeasurable.

Jemele came from humble beginnings in Detroit. She was estranged from her father because he was a drug addict. Her mother also struggled with drug use, and Jemele spent much of her childhood with her maternal grandmother. She knew things were amiss in her family, and she turned to reading and writing to cope and escape reality.

I have shared bylines with Jemele and I have also shared my deepest secrets with her. She is as loyal and caring as they come.

This is the woman who flew home to surprise me for my going-away party from the Detroit Free Press. She couldn't continue to lie to me about supposedly not coming, so she just stopped talking to me for weeks leading up to the event.

This is the woman who sat on the phone in silence for hours and allowed me to cry when my sister died from cancer at age 43. I was searching for answers that neither of us had. She gave me what she could: a strong and sympathetic shoulder.

Four years later, when my mother passed away, Jemele was the woman who arranged for us to see one of the final recordings of the "Late Show with David Letterman" and had me as a guest on ESPN's campus to watch she and colleague Michael Smith host their former show, "His & Hers." It was her way of distracting me from my grief.

This is the woman who flew to Indianapolis to see Stevie Wonder with me at Bankers Life Fieldhouse simply because I asked her to do so.

Two months ago, after I had won a national journalism award for column writing, flowers showed up at the front desk of IndyStar. They were from Jemele.

I could go on forever sharing her kind actions and attributes. But I'm not writing this to convince anyone that Jemele Hill is a well-intentioned and thoughtful human. I'm writing this because I refuse to sit silent and not offer balance to what I see as a calculated attack on my sister and friend.

Email IndyStar columnist Suzette Hackney at suzette.hackney@indystar.com. Friend her on Facebook at Suzette Hackney and follow her on Twitter: @suzyscribe.

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San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, middle, sits during the National Anthem before an NFL preseason football game against the San Diego Chargers, Thursday, Sept. 1, 2016, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson) ORG XMIT: CACC105
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